Globalisation has opened the doors for brands to expand beyond borders while social media technology has given consumers around the world the chance to talk to each other. But what sounds like a massive opportunity for market research could actually be the event that makes the industry extinct, said MasterCard’s senior business leader Fred John at the Esomar Congress yesterday.

MasterCard and Chrysalis Partners carried out a survey of CMOs asking how globalisation would affect the role of market research in the future, and the answer was an ominous “all bets are off”.

John said: “Marketers see social media problems as ‘mechanical’ ones that can be fixed by IT departments. CMOs see research as old, plodding and slow. And not cool enough to handle social media. There is a threat of us losing our place as the source of consumer information. We could be relegated to dealing with tactical or local issues – or become extinct.

“Our future is linked to the hub and spoke model,” said John. “As we become more spoke we are getting pushed out of the picture. We need a centralised marketing role; the action is going to be at headquarters, where the marketing department is.”

Making a “call to arms” to the industry, John said that researchers must “fight for our future, dispel the myths and prove that we have the skills to master social media and find the nuggets of information that CMOs and IT departments are not finding”.